


the dead of winter

by inabsurd



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternative Prompt: Winter, Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29045604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inabsurd/pseuds/inabsurd
Summary: “Take this book, get on a boat, and sail as far away as possible. To the ends of the Earth.”Get on a boat. As if boats and beaches and babes and brothers are anywhere within the realm of possibility for him. As if he will ever feel a semblance of warmth again with those words pressed tight against his heart.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31
Collections: Stanuary





	the dead of winter

**Author's Note:**

> me, writing a spur of the moment Stanuary fic for an alternative prompt? it's more likely than you think.

Something about Stan showing up to Ford’s cabin in the woods in the dead of winter feels fitting. The road is piled high with snow and ice that glints dangerously in his headlights. The Diablo doesn’t have winter tires, but, by some miracle, his car doesn’t get stuck until he makes it into Ford’s driveway.

The cabin looks to be half-hidden under the snow and the wood groans under the weight of it all in the howling winds. Looking at the building for the first time, Stan cannot stop the morbid thought that he will surely be buried under the oncoming avalanche. 

The house is cold. Colder, maybe, than it is outside, but that could just be Ford’s terrible hospitality. His idea of a greeting these days is a crossbow to the face and a light to the eyes that leaves him seeing sunspots in the dark hallway light.

There is no “Good to see you,” or, “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

“I have something to show you. Something you won’t believe.” That’s what he gets instead.

It’s a portal. For all of his brother’s long nerd-words, it’s a portal, and just looking at it creeps Stan out. Like it’s  _ leering  _ at him from the other side of the room with its frigid gaze. It’s judging him, somehow; telling him  _ Look at me. Look at  _ him.  _ Look when he can do without deadweight to hold him back. _

He tries to play it off. Everything about this interaction has been weird and uncomfortable and  _ does Ford  _ ever  _ use his heating?  _ In the poorly insulated basement, he can see Ford’s words hit the air in mocking little clouds that pierce and freeze.

“Take this book, get on a boat, and sail as far away as possible. To the ends of the Earth.”

_ Get on a boat.  _ As if boats and beaches and babes and  _ brothers _ are anywhere within the realm of possibility for him. As if he will ever feel a semblance of warmth again with those words pressed tight against his heart.

Of course, he’s wrong about that, too. He does feel heat for one final second; like Ford has pressed his back into searing hot metal that  _ burns, screams, melts  _ just to be contradictory.

The scent of his own sizzling flesh fills his nose and white-hot pain blinds his vision. Somehow, between one moment and the next, Ford disappears. Pushed through the portal by Stan himself, who cannot bring the control panel back to life no matter how much button-pressing he tries.

In that dark house, it feels like that burn, that one final moment of warmth—of heat too hot, too much—is the only proof he has of Ford ever being there at all.

The frost creeps in, and he is swallowed beneath the avalanche just like he thought he would be. Stan runs the furnace that first winter whenever he can afford it, and chops firewood for the wood stove as soon as his shoulder is healed enough to do so, but the house never gets any warmer.

His death is a fiery, dramatic thing. Something meant to attract and redirect, and hopefully chase the chill from his bones for just a moment.

His funeral is dark and black and Stan wears his only good suit to it. That same suit becomes his uniform, his armor, his wall.

Once, after a tour, Soos asks him, “Mister Pines, aren’t you hot? It’s, like, a hundred degrees outside.”

Stan responds without thinking, “Nah. I just feel cold.”

There is a space heater in the basement that he cranks on high each and every night. It runs up his power bill more than he’d like, but it’s one of the few things he refuses to be stingy about. Still, maybe he should just scrap the thing because it’s very clearly broken. Stan works in his boxers and tank-top most nights—the only clothes he can ruin without having to replace them right away—but even with his bare skin scant inches away from the heater’s surface, he cannot warm his age-stiff fingers.

He does still have to sleep though. With practice, Stan’s managed to live on four hours of sleep every night for thirty years—honestly, though, it’s probably something closer to forty considering the way he was living before—something, he thinks, even his brother would have to tip his hat off too.

Then again, considering the way he was acting the day Stan saw him, maybe his brother had a leg up on him there too.

The nightmares are a pretty good deterrent, though, which keeps Stan working longer and harder than he’s ever been able to before.

It’s always the same dream: Rico and Jimmy Snakes follow him in an unmarked van and an all-too-familiar motorcycle. He comes upon Ford’s house while trying to outrace his past on a highway that always ends right here. They don’t follow him inside, and that suits Stan just fine until he realizes Ford’s not inside with him. 

He tears through the house one room at a time, finding windows blown and a creeping frost that makes up his footsteps as though winter itself is following him barely a step behind. It ends in the basement, it always does. Sometimes, Ford is down there already, a brand in the shape of a shipwreck in his hands, waiting for the moment Stan’s back is turned. Sometimes, Ford isn’t there at all, already gone where Stan can't follow.

And the _ portal. _ The portal opens a yawning, cyan vortex of  _ chill, chill, chill  _ that lasts for half a moment before falling dead; half-buried under the storm that Stan brought with him.

Stan stacks his bed high with blankets to bring some semblance of warmth when he wakes up from these nightmares, but they never seem to help.

Then things change.

Shermie’s kid calls him up out of the blue. Stan does his best not to talk to the rest of the family when he can help it, and, as such, when he hears his nephew on the other line, he assumes there’s another funeral coming up.

It’s not. It’s a call about summer vacation, actually. “Would you be willing to take in the kids over the summer?”

The kids. His great-niece and great-nephew. Mabel and Dipper. He hasn’t seen them since they were, what, four? They’re almost teenagers now.

“You sure they wanna spend their summer up in the sticks? Ain’t much to do ‘round here ‘cept work for me.”

“We’re sure. The kids could use the fresh air, and it’s been a while since they’ve visited their great-uncle.”

Stan could say no. He  _ should  _ say no. Summer’s the height of the tourist season, those two measly months pay his bills and keep his cupboard full of brown-meat each year. Not to mention working on the portal is going to be nearly impossible with two kids under-foot (Stan was twelve once. He  _ knows  _ the kind of trouble nosey twins can get into). Plus, the town is literally full of monsters and no responsible parent would want their kids anywhere near all of that.

...Good thing he’s an uncle.

The kids show up and they’re every bit of trouble Stan thought they would be. Dipper is a tiny Sixer waiting to happen and Mabel is a force of nature if nature was made up of yarn and glitter. They cause more trouble than even  _ he _ did. Suddenly, he realizes why his ma passed so young; these kids are going to kill him before his next birthday, which is sad because his birthday is less than two weeks away.

He likes having them around, though.  _ Er, for the free labour, of course. _

For the first time in thirty years, Stan turns down his thermostat and lets the wood stove sit empty in the kitchen. He pulls the extra blankets from his bed and folds them away in the closet. During a heatwave, he even closes the Mystery Shack and spends the day in his boxers. Soos gives him an odd look, but if he has a problem with it, there’s bound to be something around here that needs fixing.

Stan brings a photo down to the basement with him; a framed “selfie” of the kids.

He finally gets around to throwing out his old space-heater.

**Author's Note:**

> Stanuary has treated me SO WELL so this is my way of paying it forward
> 
> thanks for reading! comments and kudos are appreciated as always!
> 
> you can follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/inabsurd) or [Tumblr](https://inabsurd.tumblr.com/) if you're interested in...well, whatever it is I'm screaming about at the moment lol


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